Recently, I had the privilege of interviewing TV writer/creator Little Marvin and the cast of Them: The Scare, coming to Prime Video on April 25, for 1428 Elm. The cast members include the legendary Pam Grier, Luke James, Deborah Ayorinde, and Joshua J. Williams. It’s not every day that I get to say I interviewed Pam Grier!
Here’s a link to the interview. The horror anthology’s second season is set in 1991, shortly after the release of the Rodney King tape that rocks LA. Ayorinde, the only cast member from Them: Season 1, plays Detective Dawn Reeve, tasked with solving grisly murders. She’s joined by Grier, who plays Dawn’s mom, Athena. James plays aspiring actor Edward Gaines, while Williams is cast as Dawn’s son, Kel Reeve. The season has nods to classic slashers, Seven, Get Out, and other genre classics, and it’s steeped in 90s culture, including some impressive needle drops.
With 2023 basically in the rearview, it’s time for all of those reflective, “best-of” lists. While I don’t think 2023 was quite as strong of a year for the horror genre as previous years, it still had plenty of decent offerings, with some features outside of franchises that terrified. My list only includes films that received distribution this year and either played in theaters or hit streaming. I would have loved to includeStrange Darling(probably my favorite movie of the year) and Mami Wata, but both features only had festival releases thus far. Hopefully, they reach a larger audience in 2024.
Without further ado, here’s my Best of 2023 horror movie list!
M3GAN
Okay, okay, I know that some horror purists and black shirts may gripe that I included a PG-13 horror movie on this list, but the truth is that no other genre movie this year had the cultural impact of M3GAN. The Blumhouse film birthed a new icon, and this will likely spawn at least a few sequels. She’s sassy. She has her own dance, and she’s a metaphor for the dangers of AI.
Infinity Pool
Other than Jenna Ortega, Mia Goth has been the genre’s it girl since 2022. She’s all kinds of sinister and delightful as Gabi in Brandon Cronenberg’s third feature Infinity Pool, which also stars Alexander Skarsgard as James, who’s psychologically tormented and abused by Gabi. While this one has plenty of WTF moments, it’s also the most mainstream of Cronenberg’s work thus far, while still addressing heavy issues such as cloning and technology.
The Outwaters
If I had to give an award out for the most WTF moments in a single movie this past year, I’d give it to The Outwaters, the feature debut of Robbie Banfitch. This gnarly found footage film released around the same time as Skinamarink, maybe the most divisive horror film of 2023. Both generated plenty of healthy debate in the horror community, and while I really appreciate Skinamarink and its portrayal of childhood fears and (maybe) abuse, The Outwaters is a leaner movie with some truly Lovecraftian horror moments. It’s currently streaming on Screambox.
Talk to Me
Talk to Me is now A24’s highest grossing horror movie. That’s right. It beat Hereditary. This year, I included the feature on the syllabus for my Horror Literature and Film class, and it generated the most discussion out of any film on the list. Some students told me it was their favorite film we covered, so I’m not surprised this movie generated so much money at the box office. It found an audience and through a spooky hand, it put a clever spin on the tired possession subgenre. Sophie Wilde’s performance as the grief-stricken Mia really carries this film. After losing he mother, she’ll do anything to communicate with the dead, including holding a creepy hand and saying, “Talk to me and let me in.” While this movie deals with grief, the “possession” plot here is also an apt metaphor for addiction.
The Passanger
Okay, okay, so The Passenger is a bit more of a thriller than straight-up horror, but there’s plenty of violence after fast food worker Benson (Kyler Ganner) shoots a bunch of his co-workers and boss after one of them bullies the hapless Randolph Bradley (Johnny Brechtold) to eat a day-old burger. From there, the two go on a twisted joy ride and Benson urges Randolph to take control of his life and be more active instead of well, a passenger. Director Carter Smith (The Ruins, Swallowed) is no stranger to genre films. His work often explores male relationships, and that’s very much true here. Benson comes across like an alpha sorta male who refuses to let anyone tell him what to do, but he’s also prone to eruptions of violence, be it with his fists or a gun. The performances here are top-notch, especially Ganner. For as explosive as this one is at times, it’s also really funny at moments.
Birth/Rebirth
Birth/Rebirthwas a festival darling this year, and for good reason. Writer/director Laura Moss’ feature debut is a clever and feminist take on Frankenstein. It stars Marin Ireland in a knock-out performance as Rose, a doctor who harbors dead bodies in the hopes of well, finding a cure for death. Ireland stars alongside Judy Reyes as Celie, a nurse who loses her daughter and will do anything to bring her back. The performances are great, and this feels like a fresh take on a classic story.
Appendage
Anna Zlokovic’sAppendage started out as a short that played Sundance a few years ago. The feature, which debuted at SXSW in March before hitting Hulu, expands upon the short’s concept about a fashion designer plagued by self-doubt who has a foul-mouthed appendage monster that jumps to life. The feature fleshes out the initial concept and calls to mind films like Basket Case, The Fly, Raw, and other body horror and creature features. This one also contains two fantastic female performances, Hadley Robinson as the lead and Emily Hampshire as the cunning Claudia.
When Evil Lurks
I suspect Demian Rugna’s second feature, When Evil Lurks, will be on a lot of best-of lists this year. The Argentinian film is one of the most brutal movies released this year to have a theatrical release before it landed on VOD and Shudder. Like Rugna’s first film, Terrified, When Evil Lurks tackles the theme of possession again, only this time, an entire village is possessed. There are sequences in this movie that you just can’t forget once the credits roll, and there’s no promise of any sort of happy ending here. Like Talk to Me, When Evil Lurks did something new, interesting, and horrifying with the well-worn possession subgenre. This is my favorite horror film of the year and the scariest on this list.
Thanksgiving
Ever since the fake Thanksgiving trailer that debuted as part of the Grindhouse double feature in 2007, Eli Roth has teased turning the concept into a feature-length film. Well, this year he finally did that. In short, Thanksgiving is an absolute blast with plenty of dark humor and gnarly kills. It sticks to the mission at hand and doesn’t stray. Oh, and it’s already getting a sequel. Me thinks the crazed John Carver killer pilgrim will be a new slasher icon. It’s also nice to have a new slasher in which every character isn’t hyper-aware they’re in a slasher movie.
Godzilla Minus One
Who would have thought 70 years into the franchise, we’d get a kaiju movie as great as Godzilla Minus One? This one returns the franchise to its post-WWII roots and focuses on a disgraced kamikaze pilot. Part horror and part Japanese melodrama, the movie, like the 1954 original, addresses trauma and effects of war and the bomb. Oh, and the King of the Monsters is horrifying in this film. HIs blue atomic breath has the effects of the bomb. It slaughters civilians, shatters windows, and pulverizes buildings. The shots of the big G at sea are equally as terrifying. All hail the king!
Overall, while 2023 wasn’t quite as strong for the horror genre as the last few years, there are still plenty of features I plan to rewatch heading into 2024. I’m looking forward to covering more film fests in the new year and seeing what films end up on my best-of list for 2024!
Let me be upfront. I don’t think The Exorcist: Believer is all that bad of a film, nor do I think it’s deserving of the 20 percent rating it currently has on RT or the fierce hate it’s facing on social media. The issue with the film is its relationship to William Friedkin’s masterpiece and the whole issue of legacy in general. If everything regarding The Exorcist universe was stripped out of the film, you would actually have a pretty unique possession movie that takes a few big swings.
No matter what, David Gordon Green had a monumental feat before him. Universal paid $400 million for the rights to The Exorcist and ordered a new trilogy. Green was already a polarizing figure to write/direct the new project after the rebooted Halloween movies. The last two entries, for various reasons, divided audiences after the massive success of the first entry, Halloween 2018. Green had a far bigger task before him when taking on the legacy of The Exorcist. Simply put, Friedkin’s film is a product of its time. Seeing Linda Blair’s Regan spew curses and pea soup at priests shocked audiences in 1973. If you want an idea of just how stunned audiences were by his film, I suggest this 20-minute documentary on YouTube, which features countless interviews with audience members at the time. You simply can’t pull that off a second time, which is why all of the sequels failed and never touched the box office success of the OG. You just can’t shock audiences in a similar fashion anymore. Most possession films feel like a retread of what Friedkin already did 50 years ago.
Cue The Exorcist: Believer. There’s actually a decent film here, but it’s pulled down by the issue of legacy. The feature follows two best friends, Angela (Lidya Jewett) and Katherine (Olivia O’Neill). They venture into the woods to perform a seance of sorts so Angela can connect to her deceased mother, who died after suffering serious injuries during an earthquake in Haiti. Angela and her father, Victor (Leslie Odom Jr), have the most compelling storyline in the film, dealing with grief and trauma. The seance doesn’t go as planned, however, and the girls go missing. Three days later, they turn up not quite right. We all know what happens next.
As a whole, the movie has some frightful scenes, but far too many quick cuts and jump scares. It also has some heavy sequences about the very nature of religion, and unlike typical possession films, Green’s feature explores other religions outside of Catholicism. This is its most interesting element that’s too undercooked and over simplified. It needed more of this aspect to make it stand out more from similar films. Again, if Green didn’t have to grapple with Friedkin’s film, he would have had more breathing room to play with his film’s more unique concepts.
The film fumbles terribly when it grapples with Friedkin’s masterpiece. To be blunt, Ellen Burstyn’s inclusion is totally and wholly unnecessary. The film adds nothing by including Chris MacNeil. The fate of the two girls is what drives the film, along with the underdeveloped exploration of the very nature of religion. Everything dealing with the first film just weighs down the new story. All callbacks and legacy characters feel shoehorned in and divert attention from the main narrative.
What’s especially frustrating about The Exorcist: Believer is that this could have been a good movie, if Green didn’t have to grapple with what just might be the best American horror film of all time. It’s never going to be topped, so why try? I truly wish that this movie did not have The Exorcist in its title or had to deal with that world. It would have been far more compelling if Green could have focused solely on the stories of two girls and their families forced to come together, despite their religious differences, to save their souls.
While Universal paid big bucks for the franchise rights, The Exorcist: Believer only earned about $27 million at the box office, an underwhelming figure considering the heavy marketing and huge money Universal spent. Will the next two movies be released in theaters? Will Green direct them? It’s too early to tell, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re dumped on Peacock. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to leave this world alone and instead greenlit scripts that aren’t so tied up in classic franchises.
Friday nights were movie time with my dad. When I was a kid, he took me to the closest Blockbuster, where we browsed the horror section. I ran my fingers over the VHS sleeves – the dark holes of Jason’s hockey mask, the knives on Freddy’s glove, the black and white images of the Universal Monsters. The Exorcist was the one film I avoided renting with him. Always, I would see it on the shelf – the text in purple letters, above the image of Max von Sydow’s Father Merrin in the streetlight, the fog around him, as he prepared to enter the house. Even the cover seemed menacing. I didn’t want to know what existed in that house.
It took me a long time to watch the film, until college, at least. Even then, my friends shared stories about the film. One of them, another horror movie buff, said each time he watched the film, something horrible happened to him, including a car accident. This, coupled with the strange stories about what occurred on the set, including a fire and various injuries to cast members, only built up the film in my mind. At some point, I finally did see the feature, hoping it wasn’t cursed. It seems silly to think about it now, but The Exorcist has such lore surrounding it.
To be clear, I wasn’t unnerved by the pea soup vomiting or head spinning, or even the infamous crucifix masturbation scene. I get why these sequences shocked audiences in 1973. Watching Regan (Linda Blair) curse at men of faith and her movie actress mom, Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), had to be shocking. In fact, if you want to know just how chilling these scenes were for audiences at the time, look up the 20-minute documentary entitled The Cultural Impact of The Exorcist on YouTube. It’s a fascinating time capsule of that era, featuring several interviews with folks who saw the film upon its release. Heck, even the Vatican got behind the movie since it scared audiences into the pews on Sunday morning.
As a whole, The Exorcist is a conversative film, even if its director, the late, great William Friedkin, was part of the rebellious New Hollywood movement. Not exactly Nixon voters. But the film proposes that only men of faith could save a 12-year-old girl from evil, especially after medicine and psychiatry fail. Is The Exorcist a backlash against the free love movement? Countless academic essays have argued that. Does evil fester in the house because Chris MacNeil is a liberal movie actress without a hubby? Maybe. You can certainly watch the movie and surmise that only traditional order and the standard, heteronormative family unit can save Regan. In a way, it’s a precursor to 1980s Reaganism.
Regardless of the possible social and political subtexts that may or may not exist within the film, it still frightened me, more than most horror films. It’s not the grotesque moments that rattled me upon a first viewing. It’s all those quieter, subtle moments, those discussions of faith and doubt. It’s that scene where Father Karras (Jason Miller) sees the homeless man in the subway and the devil later challenges him, channeling the voice of the beggar, who, by the way, the priest turned his back on in the subway. Homelessness and apathy towards it are a real, tangible form of evil that exists, that we’ve all seen. It’s the struggle Karras has with his faith and the way the devil toys with him, making him feel guilty about his ailing mom, too, who’s left to a shabby nursing home.
Prior to that, it’s the tender moments Regan has with her mom, like when she asks for a horse. Regan is presented to us as a sweet, harmless girl, so what happens to her via an outside force is more harrowing and nerve-wracking. We need her to survive because we see the most innocent version of her early in the film.
Beyond all of that, I was raised Catholic, and though I left the Church not long after my Confirmation in middle school, the way the film addresses faith still resonates with me. In fact, Karras’ characterization and inner conflict is one of the strongest portrayals of a shaken faith that I’ve ever seen on film. And even if I left the Church a long time ago, I still grew up with the idea that evil exists, that maybe, just maybe, if I did something wrong, I, too, could be possessed. After all, if a demon could possess a kid like Regan, what about me? Yes, all of this is incredibly superstitious and foolish. I get that, but when you grow up attending church every Sunday and know the routines of the Catholic mass, some of the old ghosts still linger. The first time I saw The Exorcist, I certainly said a Hail Mary and Our Father before drifting to sleep. No wonder so many people ran to church after seeing the film. It presents the idea that yes, the devil exists, and yes, such a force could possess anyone at any time.
I also must point out that Scranton is my hometown, and it’s Miller’s, too. He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, not just an actor, and after he moved to LA, he returned to Scranton and led an actor’s group. Unfortunately, he fell to alcoholism and died of a heart attack at Farley’s Pub and Eatery, which used to be in downtown Scranton. There’s a bust of him at our Courthouse Square. Even though I never personally met Miller, the rumors about him persisted when I grew up. Folks talked about seeing him in the supermarket or at a bar. Instead of his groundbreaking performance in The Exorcist, or the fact he won the Pulitzer Prize for That Championship Season, they spoke of his downfall, of his alcoholism.
Miller’s story is as heartbreaking as Karras’ fate in The Exorcist. Karras invites the demon to leave Regan’s body and possess him. Just as it does, he jumps out of the bedroom window, crashing and tumbling down those famous stairs. This harrowing conclusion is foreshadowed several times, with more than one shot of the steep stairs. Karras’ character arc, like Miller’s life, is simply tragic. I also don’t know what it says about my scrappy, blue-collar city if one of its most famous sons died on a bar stool. Scranton contains several Catholic churches and a bar on nearly every corner. It’s a city still trying to claw its way towards some kind of revitalization long after its mines closed. Yet, after the LA lights and Hollywood fame, Miller returned. I’ll never forget that.
For me, Friedkin’s film is such a masterpiece because of the way it deftly handles questions of faith. I don’t care about Regan’s scarred face or explicit sexual taunts against the priests. It’s the film’s quieter and character-driven moments that resonate for me.
It took me a long time to finally watch The Exorcist after always passing it by at the local Blockbuster. As someone raised Catholic, its portrayal of real world evil shook me, even if I left the Church years ago. I suspect this is why the film hit such a nerve and why Friedkin had such a masterpiece on his hands. Other than maybe Psycho and Jaws, no other horror film was such a cultural event as The Exorcist.
In honor of “The X-Files” 30-year anniversary, I wanted to share two articles I worked on in celebration of the show. The first is a list sharing my 10 favorite episodes, and the second is an analysis of the show’s scariest episode, Season 4’s “Home.”
This semester, I’m teaching Frankenstein again. To coincide with the novel, I always teach a few of the film adaptations, typically Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, directed by James Whale, and I’m also including The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster, released this year, directed by Bomani J. Story. If you like the Frankenstein story, I highly recommend this latest take on it, staring a teenager, Vicaria (Layla DeLeon Hayes), who resurrects her brother, killed by gang violence. I caught the film initially at the Jim Thorpe International Film Festival, and I was surprised how fresh it felt, how relevant to 2023, for the way it dealt with issues of gang violence, familial bonds, and racial tension. There’s one classroom scene in particular that’s just harrowing. It was one of the toughest scenes I’ve seen all year.
If you want a full list of my favorite Frankenstein films, you can check out my list for 1428 Elm. One film on the list is Birth/Rebirth, also released this year. To learn more about the film, check out the list.
If you have a favorite Frankenstein adaptation, let me know!
For 1428 Elm, I had the pleasure of chatting with Joseph Winter, co-director/star of the found footage horror comedy Deadstream. You can read the full interview here. We talked found footage, what scares him, and of course, horror comedies.
Winter plays Shawn Ruddy, an influencer who livestreams from a haunted house and is generally spooked by everything that goes bump in the night. The film also stars Melanie Stone as Chrissy, an apparent superfan of Shawn’s livestreams. The movie draws a lot of influence from the Evil Dead franchise, and it’s a rare horror comedy that gets both the comedic beats and scares just right.
While there has been a lot of screen horror lately, reflecting the times we live in, Deadstream is unique for some of its gross-out horror and jokes. It was one of my favorite films last year, a true standout compared to the glut of screen horror we’ve seen these last few years.
Deadstream is currently streaming on Shudder, and a physical release, including a Walmart exlusive Steelbook, will be released on July 18.
There’s something about New Mexico. If you’ve been there, then maybe you understand why it deserves its “Land of Enchantment” moniker. The place feels mystical and magical. It has endless miles of desert, which are quite spooky at night, if you’re driving on the highway, with the next town dozens upon dozens of miles away. I’ve never quite encountered darkness like that, an endless, inky expanse, until the orange lights of the next dustbowl town. It also has dips and curves of mountains that overlook said deserts, and other places where the terrain just flattens out.
I had the pleasure of visiting the state, including two of its National Parks (White Sands and Carlsbad Caverns). The parks are just as extraordinary as the rest of the state. The White Sands in particular feel like some strange anomaly that cause you to lose all sense of perception. The trip concluded with the Roswell UFO Festival, and if I wasn’t a believer in the incident prior to the festival, I at least become open-minded after. Roswell isn’t a huge town, with a population of just shy of 50,000, but it really leans on whatever happened that summer of 1947. Weather balloon? Military craft? UFO? Who knows! But everywhere in the town, and I mean everywhere, celebrates the lore. The McDonald’s is shaped like a UFO. Countless gift shops sell alien Ts.
If you get a chance to visit New Mexico, do it, and if you want more info about the UFO Festival, check out my articles for 1428 Elm by clicking here, complete with more pictures.
Horror has a long and layered queer history, going all the way back to James Whale’s films for Universal Studios, including Bride of Frankenstein, That Old Dark House, and The Invisible Man. More recent examples include Jennifer’s Body, Let the Right One In, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, which has found a new audience thanks to its obvious queer themes.
In honor of Pride Month, I wanted to share two articles. One examines Anthony Perkins’ life in the context of Psycho II and its 40-year anniversary this month. You can read that by clicking here. The second article is a list of five queer horror classics to stream during Pride Month, and you can click that here.
It’s long overdue, but Robert Englund finally has his own documentary, Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story. While there have been plenty of docs on The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, oddly there’s been none about its main man. The documentary mostly features Englund, seated on a stool, telling one story after the other from his long career in Hollywood. He’s always entertaining, sometimes personal, and often funny. The doc also features a who’s who of the horror genre, including Tony Todd, Eli Roth, Kane Hodder, Heather Langenkamp, among others.
To read my full review, published over 1428 Elm, click here.
The documentary comes to Screambox on June 6 and will release on Blu-ray on July 25.
Brian Fanelli 